We had so much fun playing in the water. We played in some form of water every day. Mostly we just hung out at the resort because it was convenient and very appropiate for the kids.


Macy is so stinkin independent. I took the four kids to the kiddie park by myself one day because Asher was sick from his sunburn and I wanted to let him rest. Not easy! I had Bethany between my legs and Macy was wandering in and out of the little kiddie pool. Not only did I have to worry about Macy wandering off, which she kept doing every chance she got, but I also kept worrying that she would trip and drown in the 1.5 foot water. It was fun, though. And I was glad to be able to let Asher rest. 

I caught this sweet moment between Asher and Bethany. I love it because it shows how he feels about his sweet Oochie Coochie.

Macy and Grandma Debbie really seemed to hit it off. Kids are so cute at this age and Debbie found all of her antics very amusing.

Caylee attatched herself to her Grandpa. Whenever he was in the room she was right there beside him, doing what he was doing. She just really loves her Grandpa.

Well, it looks like I am done blogging for now. My computer won't upload anymore pictures. I am thinking that this website is just busy because it it 11:40 pm. So, time to do something else.

Bethany started to get up on her hands and knees before we went on vacation. She is doing it much better now and more often. It is so exciting to see your kids simply do the normal stuff that they do.


This picture is for you, Cindy. Natalie loved her birthday present. She still plays with it often. It really came in handy when we spent the night at my in-laws. Caylee found a stuffed toy to sleep with and Natalie had a sob session because it was the only one. I remembered that Maggie Leigh was in the van so I ran to save the night. Now Natalie has an even closer connection to her special toy.

We stopped at Bill and Debbie's house for a day because we got there a bit early. Debbie gave the girls necklaces that she used to wear in the 80's. She said that they are actually valuable and you can't really find that kind of quality anymore. So I took the necklaces away for now because I do not feel they are quite mature enough to take care of them properly. I will give them back a year or two from now.



N
No visit to Asher's family would be complete with the game of Heck. It is like a multi-player version of Solitaire and very fast-paced.

This is the girls' great-grandparents, Bill's parents. I was glad that we got to see them because they are having some major health issues and we are not sure how many times we will get to see them.

I am back now! Actually I have been for about a week, but since I practically have to negotiate with my husband to use the computer during free time, I have not blogged. (Actually, this time there was no negotiating. I just snagged it.) For those who don't know, our family took a vacation to South Carolina and Florida. It was so fun. I sincerely did not want to come home. We tried to enjoy it as much as we could because we will probably not leave Oklahoma for the next two years. We really did have a blast! I have found out over the years that just because you go on vacation does not guarantee you a great time. In our family we are usually wrangling the two little ones, so Asher and I cannot really enjoy ourselves. This time we joined Asher's parents in Myrtle Beach, SC. at their timeshare. It was a nice resort with lots of family ammenities. The best thing was the little water park. We spent a lot of our time there. Caylee was fascinated with the jacuzzi. I found her quite a few times just sitting a soaking with the older people. One day we actually did go to the beach. That may have been the most fun day of the whole trip. The waves were huge and so Asher and I spent the whole day boogie boarding. We started out with Bill and Debbie and our family, but they got hot because they were not in the water, so they took the babies back to the room. We were able to boogie the rest of the day while keeping an eye out for the older girls. Whew! They are so much easier to take care of than the babies. That would have been impossible if even Macy was there. I decided that where I would really like to live is right near the beach so that every morning I could walk over and go boogie boarding for a couple of hours in the morning. I would get so skinny! Ah, well. I can dream.

I got to go for now. I will post more later.

It wasn't very easy to take pictures of Macy because she kept moving. I didn't want the flash on because I was trying to use diffused light. On my camera when you don't use the flash, especially when not on manual, the pictures come out very blurry if there is any movement. Chrysinda, does that happen on your camera? This is the best clear picture that I got of Macy. My dad happened to come over when I was taking in the middle of my photo shoot with Bethany (NONE of those pictures came out), and he told me that he has a tripod that I can use. Hallelujah!

PHOTO SHOOT

My family knows a neat elderly couple named the Warringtons. They attend my parents church, which is the church Asher met and married in. The Warringtons are extremely bright people who have given their lives in ministry as missionaries to children. George retired just a couple of years ago from being the regional director for Children's Bible Ministries (CBM). It is a ministry that takes children out of school about once or twice a month and teaches them a class about Jesus and how to get saved. Well, George is in very poor health now and my mom called the other day and asked me to take some pictures of George and Donna. She wants to give the pictures as a present to Donna so that she will have something to remember her husband when he dies. I got really excited about it because I love George and Donna, and I would love to get the opportunity to do something meaningful for them. I have been thinking about using this format of b/w, with black background and diffused light for a while with my kids, but just hadn't gotten around to it. So I am actually getting two things accomplished here. Does anyone have a big black sheet that I could borrow for a couple days? For these pictures I used a throw blanket that really was not big enough. I had to work very hard to fit the picture right. It worked okay for my tiny girls, but obviously it wouldn't be big enough for two adults.

I just want to add that I did not do anything special to the girls to primp them up for pictures, except for Natalie. I just called them into the garage and said sit/stand on the blanket. It was all kind of a spur of the moment thing this morning.

Here are most of the pictures that won't show up on my previous blog. I used my Picasa program to upload my pictures to my blog, but it only really does 4 pictures at a time. I tried to cheat and get more on there because I like the way I am able to edit the pictures in Picasa, but I guess it didn't work.

Camping Trip

Saturday we went camping with the Bible Study and had great fun and fellowship. I am not going to say that camping with two babies was easy, but overall we really had a blast.

Our camping adventure took place at Lake Tenkiller which is in Eastern Oklahoma, about 2-3 hours away, depending on how fast you drive. The scenery was beautiful, but the weather was really hot and sticky, which you pretty much for summer camping. Oh, wait a minute, it is not summer yet, is it. Could have fooled me.

We were only there about 24 hours, but is seemed like a long time. We were so busy every minute enjoying God's creation, taking care of babies, swimming, sitting around chatting, fishing, taking care of babies, organizing camp stuff, playing frisbee or football, napping, reading our Bibles, roasting marshmellows and having Bible study that is just seemed that we must have been there for a few days.

It really was nice for me to be able to get to know the people we were camping with better. They are really just a great group.


This is a cake that Natalie made for me. That girl is alway playing in the dirt. We cannot pass by a mound of dirt without her at least touching it. If we let her, she will play in in for hours.

Starting from the left, this is Josh, Ryan, Ben, and Krisha.


Caylee saw that a few of the adults had some fishing poles, and got it into her mind that she really wanted to go fishing. She was very insistant about it and acted like it she has been wanting to go for a while. That is funny because I have never been fishing and Asher has not gone the whole time we've been married. So I am just wondering where she got the idea that she would like it.

Well, sweet Krisha offered to take the two older girls to catch perch off the dock. That is where we started, but didn't have any bites. One fish did come over and smell the bait, but swam away. I think he thought it was a bit fishy. 8)





Waiting for a bite is really boring.












Since we weren't having any luck at the dock, Krisha decided to try the shore. Much better! It only took minutes to catch the first perch. It was really pretty. You can't see it very well in the picture, but the fish had lots of different colors in it. Caylee was so excited. She loved to hold up the string and show off her catch, but she did NOT want to touch it. Natalie did though. She thought is was soft and slimey.





This is Ryan, Krisha's boyfriend, pretending to eat some sort of small lizard that he caught. Uck! I thought that it looked a lot like a salomander.

This is the bay where we went swimming. The water was perfect in temperture. Macy was so brave. She loved being in the water. She wanted to be able to swim like her sisters, so she kept trying to wriggle away from me. So she had to learn the hard way to stay with me. She went under a couple of times, so decided the shallow water was not so bad. She really didn't seem traumatized by it at all though. She was acted like, "Oh well, I guess I will stay over here."




This is Wally being a goofball. He had the smallest perch, so he was trying to weigh down his line, so is seemed heavier.










The little boy in this picture is a kid from the camp site next to ours. He came over and hung out with us the first day, mostly doing guy stuff. That evening his Grandma came over and told us his sad story. Apperently he had been abandoned by his mother at birth and she was raising him, but he didn't have very many friends, especially boys to play with, so she was very thankful that our guys were paying attention to him and involving him in our fun.
I was so proud of the guys. The next day Josh, Ryan and Wally spent all of their free time with James. They wrestled and played all morning. I even saw Wally giving James his phone number and xbox online information.
This is the life! One of Asher's dreams is to have a hammock and be able to nap in it with the breeze gently blowing across his face. There was no breeze this day, but it was still quite comfy.







Yummy! One of the best parts of camping. Mike and Leah made smore's for the girls, and they just thought that was like heaven. Caylee told me that she was going to eat a whole bag of marshmellows, but obviously that didn't happen. We squelched that idea pretty quickly. She had one smore and seemed pretty content with that.


This is so funny. Caylee was sleeping in the van with her mouth wide open. I thought is was amusing, so I got my camera out to take a picture. At the same time Macy noticed what Caylee was doing and decided to close her mouth. You can see her little hand trying to get Caylee lips together. She was actually successful, but woke Caylee up in process, so I couldn't get that picture that I had wanted.

Whew! Last week was tough! I really worked my tooshie off. We were getting ready for the bible study, so we decided to have a garage sale and paint my bedroom. Well, I decided to paint my bedroom. It seemed like a good idea at the time. That is a lot of work for one week. Especially since I had to sand a lot of the previous paint off the trim first. The garage sale went better than I expected. Elizabeth came and helped me with it the first day. She got everything really organized and she helped me with the kids. She has a real knack for those things. I made over $150, which is not a lot for a garage sale, but I undersold quite a bit to get things moving.

The girls had a blast at the garage sale. Katy and her "friend," Lake, came over and they got to just play outside all day long for two days.

Well, the painting did not quite get done on Friday, which turned out okay because we did not need to use that room. I love the new color. I am going to show before and after pictures when I am all done.

I feel like the busyness just does not end. This week is VBS, which I volunteered to help for some reason, then this weekend we are going camping with bible study people. Plus we are still holding bible study on Friday. *hyperventilating* Okay, just got remember to take my thyroid medicine and I will be fine.